Sevasti Chatzopoulou

Unpacking the Mechanisms of the EU ‘Throughput’ Governance Legitimacy: The Case of EFSA

Abstract The proliferation of European Union (EU) agencies, referred to as agencification phenomenon, constitutes a significant EU institutional innovation. Agencification aimed to provide information, promote efficiency, decrease politicisation and generate standards based on specialised technical knowledge. However, the expanded role of EU agencies in regulatory policy-making has raised legitimacy questions, particularly in times of crisis and scandals. The legitimacy of agencies has been extensively studied with regard to input, and output (efficiency) legitimacy criteria. Instead, drawing on Schmidts (2013) work this article claims that in order to assess the overall legitimacy of the EU regulatory governance through agencies, the ‘throughput’ criterion needs to be considered. Although important, the ‘input’ (politics) and ‘output’ (policy) criteria fail to capture what happens within the actual governance (process), between the decisions and the outcomes. Examples from the EU food regulatory governance through the European Food Safety Authority, a particularly technical and scientific policy area, illustrate how the ‘throughput’ mechanisms operate. While the absence of one of the throughput mechanisms delegitimises the regulatory governance of food, their simultaneous presence contributes to overall legitimacy of governance.

The dynamics of the transnational food chain regulatory governance

Purpose – The need for food safety and food quality standards is acknowledged by public regulators, private actors, and the society. The purpose of this paper is to identify the types of actors in the multilevel transnational food chain regulatory governance and how their interlinking affects regulatory outcomes over time. Design/methodology/approach – Food chain regulatory standards emerge within a complex process beyond the state. Based on interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives, namely regulatory governance and political economy, this paper provides a integrative framework of analysis by identifying the types of actors and their interactions in the food chain regulatory governance. Findings – Food chain regulatory standards setting have been mainly studied either from the public regulator or the firm self-regulating point of view. This paper demonstrates how the political and economics dynamics of the interactions among public and private actors operate within the transnational food standards settin...

When Do National Administrations Adapt to EU Policies? Variation in Denmark and Greece

This article joins the Europeanization studies and examines the administrative adaptation to Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), a highly institutionalized and regulated policy, in two small older member states, Denmark and Greece. The findings demonstrate variation in administrative adaptation. In Denmark, both formal and informal administrative structures adapt to CAP, while in Greece administrative adaptation is limited to formal structures. This variation is attributed to two dimensions of the domestic institutional and organizational settings, namely “centralization” and “professionalism.” The comparative analysis provides an in-depth understanding of the administrative differences between North and South—a cleavage that became prominent during the Eurozone crisis.

Combining Centralization and Decentralization in Danish Public Administration

The Danish administration system underwent significant changes over time adapting to internal and external challenges such as administrative reforms and EU policy decisions. These challenges led to changes in the Danish administrative structures, which aimed to enhance efficiency, performance but also deliberation and steering by dialogue with the citizen. The administrative changes followed also international trends within the public administration such as New Public Management but also collaborative governance. They have been characterized both by centralization and decentralization, often combining top-down hierarchy steering with network governance characteristics. The most recent administrative reform that has been introduced in 2007 decreased the number of Municipalities and countries, increasing formally the level of centralization but also transferred competences from the regional to the local strengthening the role of the municipalities.

Social Movements and the Construction of Crisis Actors: Collective Responsibility, Identity, and Governance

This article examines the Europeanization of social movements following the European sovereign debt crisis. It develops a theoretical framework to measure degrees of social movement Europeanization, incorporating targets, participants, and issue frame dimensions of mobilization. Europeanization of social movements occurs when they collaborate with similar movements in other countries, claim a European identity, invoke Europe-wide solidarity, contest authorities beyond the state and ascribe responsibility for solving the crisis to European Union (EU). By targeting EU authorities, social movements may contribute to the construction of the EU as a crisis actor and through deliberative processes define the roles and identities of such actors.

The EU agencies’ role in policy diffusion beyond the EU: EEA, EMA and EFSA

The extensive literature on the EU agencies has mainly focused on their role in the harmonisation and expansion of regulatory standards within the EU. This paper joins this literature and investigates the role of EU agencies in policy diffusion beyond the EU borders. To operationalise this, the paper identifies and compares the organisation structural characteristics in three decentralised agencies, namely the European Environmental Agency (EEA), the European Medicine Agency (EMA), and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). These agencies share a common interest in the environment and health quality within the risk assessment. This paper shows that the EU agencies develop various entrepreneurial methods and that they actively promote policy diffusion beyond the EU through socialisation and learning during international arrangements and collaborations. However, variations in their organisation structural characteristics lead to differences in their international arrangements and policy diffusion.

Responsible decision-making for plant research and breeding innovations in the European Union

ABSTRACT Plant research and breeding has made substantial technical progress over the past few decades, indicating a potential for tremendous societal impact. Due to this potential, the development of policies and legislation on plant breeding and the technical progress should preferably involve all relevant stakeholders. However, we argue here that there is a substantial imbalance in the European Union (EU) regarding the influence of the various stakeholder groups on policy makers. We use evidence from three examples in order to show that the role of science is overlooked: 1) important delays in the decision process concerning the authorization of genetically modified (GM) maize events, 2) the significance attributed to non-scientific reasons in new legislation concerning the prohibition of GM events in EU member states, and 3) failure of the European Commission to deliver legal guidance to new plant breeding techniques despite sufficient scientific evidence and advisory reports. We attribute this imbalance to misinformation and misinterpretation of public perceptions and a disproportionate attention to single outlier reports, and we present ideas on how to establish a better stakeholder balance within this field.